Published:RabochyNo. 3, May 24, 1914.

      Published according to the text inRabochy.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1972,

      Moscow,Volume 20,

      pages306-308.Translated:Bernard Isaacs and The Late Joe FinebergTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Inan article which attracted the attention of the
class-conscious workers, An, leader of the Caucasian liquidators, recently
announced that he disagreed withLuchand its successors,
disagreed with theiropportunisttactics.

Thisstatement implies thebreak-upof the “August bloc”, a
fact no subterfuges or tricks can refute.

Atpresent, however, We wish to draw the readers’ attention to
something else, namely, to An’s argument about Russia’s two paths of
development. He writes:

“Luchbases its tactic on the possibility of
   reform, it aims at reform.Pravdabases its tactic on a ‘storm’,
   it aims at a break-up.”

“Luchbases its tactic on the possibility of
   reform, it aims at reform.Pravdabases its tactic on a ‘storm’,
   it aims at a break-up.”

Fromthis An draws the conclusion that thetwotactics have to
be united. This conclusion is wrong. It is not a Marxist conclusion.

Letus examine the matter.

Bywhat is Russia’spath, the nature and speed of her
development, determined?

Bythe alignment of social forces, by the resultant of the class
struggle.

Thatis obvious.

Whatsocial forces operate in Russia? What is the line of the class
struggle?

Russiais a capitalist country; she cannot but develop
capitalistically. Russia is now undergoing a bourgeois-democratic
transformation, a release from the serf-owning system, emancipation. Under
conditions of world capitalism Russia’s emancipation is inevitable. What we
do not yet know is the resultant of the social forces that are working
towards emancipation. These forces, in the main, are:
1) bourgeois monarchist liberalism (the capitalists and some of the
landlords of the Progressist, Cadet and partly Octobristparties);
2) the bourgeois democrats (the peasantry, urban petty bourgeois,
intellectuals, and so on);
3) the proletariat.

Eachof these classes acts—we take only the action of the masses, of
course—in line with the economic position of the given class. There can
beonly oneresultant.

Inwhat sense, then, can we speak of Russia’s two paths? Only in the
sense that, until the outcome of the struggle, we do not and shall not know
this resultant, which will approachone of the twosimplest and
clearest lines visible at once to everybody. The first line is “reform”,
the second a “storm”.

Reformis the name given to changes which leave the power in the
country in the hands of the old ruling class. Changes of the opposite order
are called “storms”. The class interests of bourgeois liberalism demandonlyreforms, since the bourgeoisie is more afraid of “storms”
than of reaction, and wishes to keep the old feudalist institutions (the
bureaucracy, two chambers, and so on) as protection against the
workers. The peasantry in all countries of the world without exception,
Russia included, vacillates, in the matter of bourgeois-democratic reform,
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Such vacillation is
inevitable, since the peasants are opposed to the landlords and serfdom
while themselves being petty proprietors and petty bourgeois.

Asfor the proletariat, its interests, which coincide with those of the
vast majority of the population, of all the exploited, move in a direction
that isnotreformist, along a path which is described in Russia
as that of the “three pillars”.

Ifthe majority of the peasants and the population follow the liberals,
the “path” will be the worst, the least advantageous to the workers and
the exploited, and the most painful to them. If the majority of the
peasants and the population follow the workers, the reverse will be the
case. One resultant or the other will be fully revealed only by the final
outcome of the struggle.

Wenow see the true implications of An’s vague and confused
argument. He has sensed rather than understood the liquidators’ opportunism
and their betrayal of the working class.

Theliquidators are reformists. They pursue, in effect, aliberal-labour, not a Marxist workers’ policy. They are trying to
subordinate the workers to the bourgeoisie.

ThePravdists are pursuing a Marxist and proletarian policy by
defending the interests of the working class in the matter of transforming
Russia. Do the Pravdists over look the possibilities of reform? This
question is easily answered by referring to the facts. Take insurance
reform, which is something real, and not dreamt up. Everyone sees that the
Pravdists seized on this ten times more strongly than the liquidators did:
seeVoprosy
Strakhovania[1]and the results of the elections to the All-Russia
Insurance Board.

Takethe “partial demands” of the economic struggle during
strikes. Everyone knows that the Pravdists are conducting this real and not
dreamt-up campaign a thousand times more intensely and energetically.

Ifthere were a group that denied the use of reforms and partial
improvements, wecould notjoin it, because that would be a
non-Marxist policy, a policy harmful to the workers.

Neithercould we join the liquidators, because repudiation and abuse of
the “underground”, repudiation and relegation of the two “pillars”, the
advocacy in present-day Russia of a struggle for a legal party and the
possibility of political reforms—all this is a betrayal of the working
class, desertion to the bourgeoisie.

ThePravdists, in the words of An, “aim at a storm and break-up”
but, as the facts show, miss no opportunity, how ever slight, of supporting
real reforms and partial improvements and explaining to the masses the sham
of reformism. This is the only correct, the only truly Marxist tactic, and
that is why it has been adopted by the overwhelming majority of the
class-conscious workers throughout Russia (this has been proved by the
facts, by the number of workers’ groups).

Onlyadherents of petty-bourgeois democracy, the Narodniks and the
liquidators, are vainly fighting against the workers, against Pravdism.

[1]VoprosyStrakhovania(Insurance Question)—a
Bolshevik legal journal, published at intervals in St. Petersburg from
October 1913 to March 1918. It worked not only for the achievement of
workers’unsurancebut for the Bolshevik
“uncurtailed slogans” of an eight-hour day, confiscation of the landed
estates and a democratic republic. Prominent insurance campaigners—the
Bolsheviks N. A. Skripnik, P. I. Stučka, A. N. Vinokurov,
N. M. Shvernik and others—contributed to the journal.